RECORD RACK

Bob Dylan

“Together Through Life”

Columbia Records

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In “Together Through Life,” the latest missive issued from his woodshed out in Malibu, the bard of America calls up some obvious influences. Bob Dylan has said this album was inspired by midcentury Chess and Sun label recordings, and indeed, the hearty ghosts of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf stomp through most tracks, with Doug Sahm and Edith Piaf stopping in for a dance or two. But John Bunyan? Leave it to Dylan to pull up some really old roots.

Bunyan’s 1679 “A Treatise of the Fear of God” may or may not be the inspiration for “Forgetful Heart,” the most ominous song on this mostly romping collection. Dylanologists, such as the historian Sean Wilentz, have noted that “the fourth part of the day” that Dylan gently intones about in “I Feel a Change Coming On” refers to an Old Testament passage (Nehemiah 9:3, for the curious) about penitence and paying heaven its due.

Chasing allusions is half the fun of listening to Dylan’s music. On “Together Through Life,” the other half involves plainer pursuits, shaking a tail feather and shouting along.

Both tossed off and carefully designed to feel that way, “Together Through Life” was recorded with cronies including Tom Petty’s longtime guitarist Mike Campbell and Los Lobos co-founder David Hidalgo, whose Creole-Latino accordion playing sets the mood throughout. Dylan’s lyrics employ the old blues technique of finding the soul in the jellyroll -- using tales of love and sex to get to deeper matters of mortal bondage and spiritual transcendence.

It’s a trick he’s used throughout his career, but here his touch is particularly light.

With such titles as “Shake Shake Mama” and “It’s All Good,” some feel a little hackneyed at first. Repeated listening peels off the layers, but Dylan’s singing, especially frog-ified to pay tribute to the “raw” in early rock, reminds us to not get too serious. “It’s all good,” Dylan says while documenting the apocalypse in the roadhouse stomp that closes the album.

Take this old bluesman any way you want to, baby, and be glad he’s still here.

-- Ann Powers

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Missing that insecure teen

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

“Outer South”

Merge Records

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“Outer South,” Conor Oberst’s new dusty rock caravan with the Mystic Valley Band, doesn’t have a single sulky teenager sentiment in it, not one diary-cribbed confession that would prompt the parents to hide every liquor bottle in the house and speed-dial the family therapist.

Oberst is nearly 30 now but “Outer South” pleads a case for the onetime wunderkind to get back in touch with the affection-starved, ragingly insecure teenager he was in the early days of Bright Eyes, the marquee band of Saddle Creek’s now-matured Nebraska scene.

The 16 songs vary in tone, from grease-and-nicotine-stained jams to spit-shined ballads, but too little of it is adroit enough in construction or execution to stick in the craw. Even “Roosevelt Room,” Oberst’s stab at Dylanesque political outrage, flames too brightly with no gradations.

If only Oberst had seared more of his sirloin-steak country-rock with a fraught sense of place, the “Outer South” of his title that’s left largely unexplored. “Cabbage Town” is named for a bohemian enclave in Atlanta, the symbolic city of the gentrifying South caught between multilane highways and neon-sign honky-tonks, a place where the foul-mouthed baby artists gather to play cards and take drugs in the old shotgun houses.

When Oberst sings over dive-bar-sloppy keys, “I’m going to love you like the New South,” it’s not exactly a compliment, but he does mean forever -- big-box stores and all.

-- Margaret Wappler

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Moving beyond boss rhymes

Rick Ross

“Deeper Than Rap”

Island Def Jam

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Negative self-image is not a problem for Rick Ross. Yes, he’s withstood withering attacks from performer 50 Cent, and he’s lived through a report on the Smoking Gun website that revealed his past as a corrections officer, a credibility killer in the world of rap to be sure. Yet on “Mafia Music,” the first song on his new album, “Deeper Than Rap,” Ross mentions himself in the same breath as Bob Marley and Martin Luther King Jr., then proceeds to boast that he “scoops Emmy winners, like kitty litter.”

The collection features nimble, almost adroit rapping, and Ross’ lyrics reveal a fresh step; he seems to have discovered a world beyond ABAB schemes that rhyme “boss” with his own last name. Not to say that Ross is living up to the hyperbole implied in his album’s title -- songs such as “Yacht Club,” “Rich Off Cocaine” and “Gunplay” are obvious odes to conspicuous consumption (or worse).

But Ross has minimal aims. He’s out to provide absurdist, escapist sunshine rap that sounds good in a Maybach but is aimed at people who can’t afford to drive a $344,000 car. Hit-makers J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, the Runners and the Inkredibles help him achieve that goal with sumptuous production that shrewdly mirrors Ross’ surf-and-turf aspirations, providing “Deeper Than Rap” with an equal balance of blindingly bright synth bangers and lush neo-”Blueprint” soul.

Guest turns from Kanye West, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Ne-Yo, the Dream and Nas inject a hypodermic charge into Ross’ money-mongering.

-- Jeff Weiss